Social Media Affects the Wellbeing of Adolescent

Literature review:

Forms of communications through electronics such as websites, digital platforms, and apps through which people communicate. Social media is also used to develop new groups to share ideas, information’s and other contents can be explained as social media. There are a number of social media that young people use such as; Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Viber, Skype, Tumblr, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Online games etc.^[1] 

In Australia, 1.49 million children and young people were online during 2015, in which 1.04 million (70%) of them got into social media or games sites.^[2] Adolescents are using a total of 5.4 million hours of different social media which include 32% social networking, 14% games, 13% videos, movies and music, 11% consumer electronics, telecommunications and general commerce, 7% education, careers and news, 7% search engines, and 16% for others.^[3] 

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According to David Cowling, social media statistics in Australia^[4] is as follows:

Over 16,000,000 people use Facebook, 14,800,000 uses YouTube,  5,000,000 people uses Instagram every month, 4,000,00 people use snapchat on daily basis and 3,100,000 uses WhatsApp.^[5]

Social media has many advantages and opportunities to encourage users themselves in many different ways.^[6] It plays an important role in many Adolescents lives by producing educational outcomes, helping to build compassionate relationships, identify information, and promotes a sense of belonging and self-esteem. Social media can be used for many different activities, in which some of them includes: organising events, activities, or groups, to share issues and opinions and make a larger audience aware of them e.g. coordinating band activities, creating awareness of various causes and fundraisers.^[7]

And Disadvantages includes: there is a risk of you getting hacked, people can find out your personal information’s, you may be provided with fake information’s, less face-to-face interactions, cannot express feelings through texts, or people may get misunderstandings, causes distractions while studying, and can cause distance between families.

Social media can affect our well-being as there are many crimes that takes place in social media. One of which is cyber bulling. Cyberbullying is the most common online risk for young people who are engaged in social media.^[8]

Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place online, by the use of electronic communication. Cyberbullying is done by sending messages of an intimidating or threatening nature.^[9]  It can occur through many ways such as - by mobile phone, text messages, email, online games, and through social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Snapchat and Instagram. According to research, about 20% of people aged 8-17 experienced bullying every year.

Most of the time older students are the ones who target younger ones to cyberbully. There is more than 80% chance that the person who gets bullied online is also getting bullied in real life (e.g. school).^[10] The person who cyber bullies may or may not even know the person they are bullying. 64% of the victims are found to be females from year 5 to 12, who reported being cyberbullied in March 2017. ^[11]

The victim of cyberbully can end up being bullied at school as well. Cyberbullying leads the victim to lowered self-esteem, low academic achievement and less interest in school. They might feel confused by the changes in their friendship groups, which might lead them to feel that they have no safe place, and they feel alone, lonely and isolated. Cyberbullying can lead to mental health issues like depression, anxiety, stress, and, in extreme cases, suicide thoughts.^[12]

Cyberbullying can affect the wellbeing of the adolescents as it can make the victim guilty and starts blaming themselves, they are hopeless, embarrassed and scared to tell other people about it because they don’t want other people to know about it, depressed and may not be accepted by their friends.